


the best that I could do was to train my eyes on you

by r1ker



Category: Midnight Special (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 02:44:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6547456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mountaingoats/dinulapattisbones.html</p></blockquote>





	the best that I could do was to train my eyes on you

Though it's not quite clear to Lucas just yet, Alton can see the two figures in the vision clear as day.

 

They're both a little older than Alton himself, maybe high school aged or on the cusp of their twenties. One stands a little taller than his counterpart, not quite a head above the other, holding his body a little less rigid. He stays keeping a questioning look on his face even though where they're at doesn't call for it. Less than five seconds after he sees that first boy he knows that's his Dad. No way that's not Dad, the face is all but identical, if not a little less worn down than the one he sports now in his 41 years of age.

 

The one next to him, by default, has got to be Lucas. Everything in Alton lets him know that that's Lucas, right down to the buzz cut and the little scowl he gets when he's thinking about something. Alton looks the young man up and down, sees the build of someone working on gaining entrance into a high-stress, high-activity job. Next to young Roy, soft around the edges a little in his tattered clothes, Lucas is all muscle, stocky build highlighted by hefty boots and worn down jeans.

 

What's not cast over in something tremendously tough are his eyes. The soft blue is regarding the figure huddled close to him with a softness Alton's never seen Lucas have in the short time the two have known each other. In all that he knows as an eight-year-old transcending human minds, he knows Lucas is in love.

 

 _Alton, what have you done,_ he can hear Lucas say next to him, voice disembodied and sounding like it's coming through an inner tube rather than being spoken into the space next to the two of them. He watches Lucas carefully, inspecting the way he holds him (not unlike someone marching to their death) as he gets closer to his past self.

 

The two figures are now standing with their backs to Alton and Lucas, looking at something imperceptible to the small audience that has formed behind them. Alton sees then-Lucas’s hand drift across his young father’s back, sliding smoothly across his denim jacket. Roy leans into the touch and even puts one of his arms across his belly to grip Lucas’s arm where its hand cups his hip.

 

Lucas now can feel that same pressure himself and tries feebly to stop his eyes from burning, from letting water gather at their lines at what life was like before he was thrown a wrench too heavy to bear. God, he can remember that day exactly in his mind. Like on autopilot his brain goes back to that day – he can't recall the calendar date, couldn't tell you for a second which season exactly was the one he found himself embroiled in Roy – but he knows.

 

The last day they'd spend with each other before Roy was to be sent to the ranch, whisked away for _his own good_ when there was really no good behind the motives at all. Lucas, that day, had told Roy to swear off work for just a day, come with him. Roy did, did without having to question anything else that might be pending in his life. The two had sat in a park for hours, talked about the ranch only sparingly, enough to make Lucas's stomach roll every time Roy mentioned what he'd be having to see and listen to for however long the minister determined he'd have to be there. It was going to be a good long while according to Roy, who said the stay would be determined by _how well he responded to the exposure._ Lucas had shuddered at that then, and that same shiver does spirals down his spine now, twenty years later.

 

Alton in the now pays attention, his head tilted up to lock eyes with Lucas as he waits for the man to speak next, to hear his thoughts on what Alton has cast for him. He knows that it's not an easy thing to answer – love doesn't seem like it's very easy, if you had to get Alton's educated opinion on the delicate subject – so he gives Lucas his time to process.

 

 _The first and only person I've ever loved with anything in me_ , Lucas says again in the makeshift world he and Alton view. He's not lying for a second. He doesn't seem to be speaking to much of anyone – not like the two he's gawking at can hear him – but Alton takes heed next to him. Lucas thinks of how insane this all is, being back in one of the best times of his life. Growing up he never thought he'd have the capacity to love something other than each day he found himself unfortunately alive.

 

He thought he'd never have room in his heart for anything other than praying to an unresponsive God that it's not his body on the side of the road, his car mangled in a ditch, his arm being sewed up in an emergency room. But he does now, it's doubled in capacity since being given back Roy, Roy and Alton nonetheless, and he can't imagine them being gone from that space now. It'd be too empty, too incapable of supporting the burdening presence they've made for themselves in his heart, to hold much of anything else.

 

Seeing this time in his life now, now after all he's gone through with not just Roy but also his extraordinary child, makes Lucas ache down to his very core. He thinks back to what Roy wore that day, what Roy smelled like when Lucas had picked him up that morning. _That's my cologne,_ he'd accused Roy of the second the Trans Am was parked in the gravel driveway of the Tomlins' home. Roy had smirked, cat who got the cream indeed, and said absolutely nothing as he brushed against Lucas on his way to his rightful seat in the passenger side.

 

 _What made you fall in love with my dad?_ Alton's question is one that yields more than one reason so Lucas takes a second before responding. His pause before answering is longer than it ought to be to give an appropriate reason but there's so many, too many to count on both hands, each one more precious than the last.

 

For starters there was the way Lucas could see life when he was with Roy. No longer was it a burden to get out of bed in the morning, to brush his teeth and go to work. If he dared to say it was a blessing to wake up every morning Roy would somehow experience it with him, he would say it without provocation. It was seen in the way Roy came to him like he was true north, the irrefutable truth in whatever happened in Roy's life.

 

There had been more than one night of the two sitting up late, Roy's ear against Lucas's chest where his leather jacket had been pulled back to give him more access, where they spent questioning life outside of Texas. There were 49 more states than the Lonestar, every single one with its own territory yet to have been explored by them. What they wouldn't have given at that instant to step outside of this county, this area, and see 'welcome to' without Texas tacked on to the end.

 

That wasn't practical of course. Lucas thought much of anything they lived didn't seem to have much reason to it at all. His ears still ring with the reverend's words promising salvation for otherwise saintly Roy, penance for the wrong he most certainly did not do.

 

 _He was easy to love with all of me_ , Lucas says and for a moment he thinks it won't make sense. It's so peculiar how much of a no-brainer it was to devote himself to all of Roy, think nothing of waking up next to him every morning and know that this was all right, there was no room for error like there would be with other people. _It was easy to see myself with him doing much of anything and loving every second of it. He made me… want to live for just more than each passing day._ At that he looks down at Alton. He can't believe just how knowing this little boy is; in all the children he's seen as a state trooper, ones that have gone through things as horrendous as Alton has, he will never see in one's eyes the all-knowing, all-seeing aspect Alton's bear.

 

Suddenly the two figures in front of them turn to face each other. Lucas sees himself murmur something to Roy, who turns as red as the plaid shirt tied around his waist. In an instant he can recall what he said. _While you're away don't get any ideas that I'm not going to be waiting here for you when you get back, yeah?_ Whatever followed it, Lucas couldn't tell, but it was something he knew he needed to reach over and cover Alton's ears for. What was said to Roy in that moment wasn't something as becoming of such a purportedly godly boy like Roy but he accepts it nonetheless, repays the Lucas standing before him with a kiss.

 

With that Lucas and Alton are violently snapped back into reality.

 

Lucas takes in a deep gasp of air like he's coming from the very depths of the ocean. His head feels like his brain's been replaced with a huge bubble of air, his eyes burning like he kept them open in that imaginary body of water. Through it all he can feel those tears he tried to stop in the vision start to gather and fall. The tears seep between his fingers where one hand slides over his face incredulously. He pulls his hand back when he feels something next to him shift closer to his tightly pressed legs.

 

Alton looks at him from beyond the goggles with eyes pleading. He too seems to be a little out of breath from casting the vision. Putting his hands on Lucas's shoulders he climbs into his lap to embrace him. Lucas sighs and holds Alton close for dear life, can't think of a single way right now to repay him for that trip into the greatest moment of Lucas's past. He threatens to crack even more at the edges when one of Alton's thumbs swipes at his cheek to worry the tears away.

 

"I didn't mean to make you upset," Alton maintains even though he knows better, knows those tears aren't of sorrow but are from overwhelming relief that those times have returned along with Roy. Lucas rests his cheek against Alton's temple and holds him close with the boy's arms firmly around his neck. "I knew you loved Dad. Thought this would help." Lucas laughs at that, wanting to find a way to thank Alton for that other than weeping like a lost child.

 

"I do, I'll do until I die," Lucas mumbles with his words lost in the hug he and his love's son – _their son now, it's changed, it's all changed_ – share. He bites his tongue on the verge of being painful in an effort to hurry the tears away. Finally he's able to swallow them and exhale any trace of them out slowly. Still he and Alton hold one another close. "I love him with all of my heart. And you reminding me of that is something I can't repay you for."

 

"You don't have to," Alton says as he sits back in Lucas's lap. "You loving my dad's all the payment I need." Lucas smiles at this kid – why wasn't he this tuned in to other people as a kid – and scoops him up quickly. Alton clings on to him like a monkey with both legs wrapped around Lucas's waist. The two set out to find the subject of their revelation, the father, the lover.

**Author's Note:**

> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mountaingoats/dinulapattisbones.html


End file.
